About time! Finally you can play Windows Media files in Firefox! Microsoft just released a new Windows Media Player plugin that’s compatible with Firefox. You can get it here. Odd… what’s in it for Microsoft? Why are they doing something like this all of a sudden?
We need more alternatives to Digg.com. Digg is a great idea, but it’s gone awry. I’d like to see more sites that offer similar functions (in a similarly user-friendly site), but without the problems of Digg? Read the rest of this entry »
Is OpenID The Way To Go?
It’s an interesting concept, but with recent developments, it may not be the way to go.
In case you didn’t already know, OpenID is a decentralized identity service. Basically it lets you login to any OpenID-capable site with the same credentials. Your login data isn’t tied to one huge corporation though (in theory). You register and OpenID with an “OpenID Provider”, basically a website that stores all your login credentials and processes requests from other sites. Anyone can become an OpenID Provider.
The major advantage of OpenID is you get one “username” (more of a URL) that you use on any OpenID-ready site.
One thing I’m not a huge fan of is the way you login to an OpenID-ready site. Registration couldn’t be simpler. Just hit register and provide your OpenID. You’ll be redirected to your OpenId Provider’s site, where you’ll have to give the new site permission to use your OpenID by entering a username and password. Can you guess how you login? You head over to your OpenID Provider’s website (like www.myopenid.com) and enter a username and password. Yournow logged in to OpenID. Now to login to an OpenID-capable site, just enter your OpenID URL (which looks like http://you.yourprovider.com). You’ll jump over to your Provider, where you’ll enter your password. Having entered the password, you’ll bounce back to the page you where on previously, now logged in. The major advantage of OpenID is you get one “username” (more of a URL) that you use on any OpenID-ready site. Personally I think the whole process is a little clumsy and needs work. It’s an interesting concept, though.
What are these “recent developments” that make OpenID less of a good idea?
Those huge corporations will likely try to take the Open out of OpenID. They will struggle to become the largest Provider, and etc etc. Microsoft is trying to “integrate OpenID into Vista”? That can’t be good.
Let me point something out. If someone gets your OpenID password, they instantly have access to every OpenID-ready site you use. “Oooh, a credit card number.”? You don’t want that to happen, do you? OpenID must not be used with sites that store credit card numbers. OpenID makes it easier for crackers to get access to your stuff. All they need to do is get login data from one site, and they have access to everything. If Microsoft is integrating OpenID into Vista (probably with a patch or Service Pack), then we can assume that Vista will be storing your OpenId URL and password so that it can log you in easier. Does that sound like a good idea to you? Given Microsoft’s reputation for security…
If someone gets your OpenID password, they instantly have access to every OpenID-ready site you use.
But having huge corporations “getting into the OpenID business” isn’t good. It all helps them in their quest to conquer the internet. So these companies will have control of the systems that let people log in to tons of sites on the web. They could block sites, for example. Say AOL doesn’t want you to use a site that competes with one of their services, they just stop their OpenID’s from contacting the sites servers and… Do you get the message? These companies will do anything to totally rules the web. Look at Yahoo. They’re buying sites up and integrating them into their main site (Del.icio.us, Flickr, etc). I’m guessing they’ll be an OpenID provider soon. Have you heard of “Yahoo Brand Universe”? Basically they’re trying to take on fan sites like The Leaky Cauldron, or other somewhat smaller sites (Leaky isn’t that small. They get over 100,000 unique users a day). Here’s an article about Brand Universe. Sounds like they want to take over the web, doesn’t it? They want to attempt to put fan sites out of business. It’s to late to do that to Harry Potter, though. Fan sites like Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet have huge followings, then there are smaller fan sites fitting into Harry Potter niche markets (like The Site of Requirement).
If AOL, MSN, and possibly Yahoo are OpenID providers, what’s to stop them from buying up the smaller providers in their attempts to become the biggest provider? Nothing.
If AOL, MSN, and possibly Yahoo are OpenID providers, what’s to stop them from buying up the smaller providers in their attempts to become the biggest provider? Nothing. If AOL said they’d pay you $3 million for your OpenID-providing site, you’d have a lot of trouble resisting that much money, wouldn’t you. It will happen.
That’s why I’m not a huge OpenID fan. I like the concept, but it’s going to blow up in everyone’s face. That’s why I’m taking a different approach in NTugo, a new site I’m working on. I’m thinking of having OpenId’s working in tandem with NTugo Accounts, so you’ll be able to login with a username and password or an OpenID. An NTugo Account will optionally have an OpenID tied to it so you can login either way. Suppose one of those corporate OpenID’ers decides to block OpenID logins to NTugo (supposing NTugo got big enough for it to matter). A user could just login with a username and password instead. If they still want to use OpenID with NTugo, they could proceed to their profile page and bind an OpenId from a different provider to the NTugo account. Good idea, or what?
Hmmm. Maybe go and see what you have to do to become an OpenId provider….
 (Continued from The Road to Linux)
Yes! I’ve finally got a working Linux installation. After spending the morning yesterday downloading three of the discs of openSuSe 10.2 and installing it later that afternoon, I finally have Linux installed. How many hours have I spent preparing all this? I’d say nearly 18 hours.
I’ve got linux…now what? I plan to download the remaining discs of the openSuSe distro soon (along with some other packages off sourceforge). I’d like to eventually get a cheap 802.11g card and install that too. It would be nice to have internet access. You can’t do much on a computer these days if you don’t have internet capability, can you? Then I’d like to see how little I can use Windows for the duration of a week. I already know of some things I’ll need to do on a Windows machine, but it would be fun to see how little I could use Windows.
I was surprised by the packages offered by the openSuSe distro. Several open-source packages I already use on Windows are there (like Audacity). Unfortunately, a lot of these are on the discs I haven’t downloaded yet. Installation of the base openSuSe CDs took ages. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given the power of the computer I was using.
Here are the specs of the machine I installed Linux on:
Now, the specs of the computer I normally use:
As you can see, if I do try to use mainly Linux for a week, it will be a challenge. Not just because of the lack of Windows, but because of the machine’s lack of power. If I do try a “Week Without Windows”, I’ll let everyone know and blog about it as I avoid Windows. Until then, it’s just a cool idea.
I decided recently to install Linux on an old machine I have (well, actually I decided a couple years ago and haven’t gotten around to it until now). It’s an ancient 488Mhz Celeron with 256MB of RAM and (currently) about 120GB worth of Hard Drive space (spread over two drives). The hard drives in the computer are 20GB and 100GB. The 20GB one has been in there with Windows 98 installed. I recently installed the 100GB one for Linux (dual-boot, yeah!).
Installing the hard drive proved to be an unnecessary challenge. First I had to open up an older computer that no longer functions (failed motherboard) and remove the 100GB hard drive so I could put it in the PC that would eventually run Linux. After opening the case, I located the hard drive. There it was in a metal enclosure…in the most idiotic place ever. It was attatched vertically on the front of the case, just below the wires connected to the system’s power button. There was no visible way to remove it. Above the drive were the optical drives, preventing it from sliding upward. After an hour of searching through Compaq’s website and talking with a support guy, I found a page with details on replacing hard drives. Looking at the pictures of different types of mounting methods, I saw one that was vertical. Aha! Going back to the case, I searched around for a little hard to see screw that was just out of reach of my screwdriver. I spent 15 minutes looking for a longer one. Once I found a suitable screwdriver (magnetic, to prevent the screw from falling who knows where inside the computer), I took the screw out. After that, all I had to do was pull the enclosure out with a “swinging motion”, so the hard drive would pivot on this hidden bracket. I quickly took the hard drive out of the enclosure and closed up the computer (it had some more functional cards that might be useful in the future).
It was time to install the “new” hard drive. I opened up the computer that would run Linux in the future. Dodging wires, I slid the drive into it’s slot, connected the wires, and set the jumper for SSCE, like the one already in there. I plugged the machine back in and started it up. What? “Primary Master Error”? I must not have set the jumpers correctly. I opened the case up again (after disconnecting the machine, of course). I set the old drive to be the primary drive and the “new” one to be secondary. I closed the case, plugged everything in and…somewhat success. No error, but I had to go into the BIOS. After 15 minutes of work, the BIOS recognized the new drive, and Windows booted off the other one. Time to install Linux easily and live happily ever after, right?
Wrong. I put my recently burned Ubuntu 6.10 disc in and rebooted. I was soon greeted with the Ubuntu logo and a set of choices. I hitthe option to start the Ubuntu Live Desktop, where the icon to start the installation was. Okay, the resolution was too high for my old monitor (which can only go up to 640×480 for some reason. It needs to be replaced). I wnet back to the menu. I set it to use 640×480. I got the Ubuntu loading screen and waited ages. Then it X11 started and everything turned brown with vertical lines. The flickering was so crazy I couldn’t see anything, even though the desktop had loaded. I’m guessing Ubuntu isn’t compatible with my ancient motherboard’s onboard graphics. So no I’m downloading OpenSuSe. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll try Fedora Core 1. The local library has a book with a couple CDs with Fedore Core 1, so I’ll try those if SuSe doesn’t work.
I just upgraded my copy of Yahoo Widgets to the new 4.0 build released recently. I’m not sure if it was a good idea. It probably wasn’t, unless Yahoo releases a patch soon.
Okay, I hate that new sidebar-dock-thing they added. It just irritates the heck out of me, and provides no useful improvements.
What keeps happening to my widgets?! As soon as I upgraded, they all vanished. I managed to restore all the ones I needed after 30 minutes of using that annoying sidebar-dock-thing. Today, all but 3 are gone again! What’s going on? Is this a bug?
I want my widgets to work again correctly, and I want a way to permanently disable the stupid sidebar-dock without compromising any functionality. I’m going to go see if there’s a way to un-upgrade.
What else can be done about Forum-Spam? It’s become increasingly prolific in the past year or so. It drives me, and other webmasters, insane. I consider it worse than your everyday email-based spam. Then there’s the ever-popular comment spam that fills your blog comments with junk.
Captcha codes help with the comment spam, but they infuriate forum users. There are tons of methods being used to combat “webspam” (as I call the general group on non-email spam), but they are being countered just as quickly. Captchas are defeated with image-reading robots, complex forum signups by manual spamming by a real person. Something needs to be done.
Captchas are defeated with image-reading robots, complex forum signups by manual spamming by a real person.
What, though? So far, outsmarting the spammers technologically has only worked for short periods of time. Governmental rulings have made it easier and more legal for the spammers. Even with decent prohibiting spam internationally, the spammers wouldn’t care. Someone needs to come up with more high-tech spam-fighting methods! The ultimate anti-spam system would stop all spam (obviously) and not irritate a site’s users.
So far, outsmarting the spammers technologically has only worked for short periods of time. Governmental rulings have made it easier and more legal for the spammers.
I don’t really care about the email-based spam people keep going on about. My personal GMail account gets about 3 spam messages per day (my domain email system fluctuates. Sometimes it’s 6/day, other times it’s once a week). It’s the webspam that needs to be dealt with.
Note: This article is about Spam (internet junk-mail). I have no problem with SPAM, the tasty(?) meat product made by Hormel.
Here’s why Linux and the Mac OS haven’t surpassed Windows yet. As a Digg user said: “This is the same type of person that thinks Internet Explorer is the Internet!”
This guy is clueless. He did an earlier post too.
Sounds like this guy knows little about computers, believes Microsoft marketting fluff, and pretends he knows more about computers than everyone else.
It’s called the Optimus Maximus (image here). At $1,490 it’s got to be the most expensive (and coolest!) keyboard ever.
Every single key on this keyboard is a tiny OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screen that can change at any time depending on the signal from your computer.
Why would you want that? Well, for starters you could easily type in Russian or Japanese, since the keys could update to fit the non-english alphabet. How about when you work in Photoshop? The keys could update to show PS’s functions on the keys instead of letters. Or what about when you’re playing a computer game? You could have all the keys that control the game change. Then there’s the annoying differences between Mac and Windows keyboards. Those vanish with the Optimus Maximus. The keyboard will include a key-mapping program to set up key layouts.
Every single key on this keyboard is a tiny OLED screen that can change at any time depending on the signal from your computer.
Cool or what? To bad about the insane price. Oh, and did I mention that the screens on the keys are only expected to last 5 years? Great idea, but impractical with the current pricing. Maybe OLED technology will come down in price in the future. The Optimus is an amazing idea, but I’drather buy a laptop than a $1500 keyboard!
In the future, will we still have desktops and laptops? What if we all had something different, something better(?). What if we all carried around, in our pockets, a device about the size of an iPod or Blackberry. What if this device was a whole computer? You’d be able to access the web at any time where ever you went. A pocket computer wouldn’t be able to replace the ease of use of a desktop though, right? Who says? We could have docking stations consisting of a monitor, keyboard, mouse, extra storage, and other add-ons and peripherals. You’d just plug the pocket computer in and you’d instantly have something resembling a desktop machine. There could even be laptop-sized docks for people who need more power on the go. There would be docking stations all over the place. Where you now find a public computer, you’d find a dock. Libraries, workplaces, internet cafes, you name it.
There would be docking stations all over the place.
This would be really cool, but only viable if you could fit the power of a desktop into a puny package. It may be doable though. Look at the processor industry lately. They’ve been making chips cooler and more energy efficient instead of faster. They’ve been doing more cores instead of a higher clock speed. Everything is being made smaller as time goes by, and the computer companies are trying to fit more into less space (the iMac is a prime example).
Will the pocket computer become as ubiquitous as a wallet?
Do we want our future computers to be like this? It depends. If it’s pulled off correctly, it would be great. However, I think a lot of people would still prefer to have just a desktop or laptop instead of a computer they carry with them. Will the pocket computer become as ubiquitous as a wallet?
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